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Samuel Jacob Gould (1778-1869)
}} Biography Early Life Samuel Jacob Gould was born during the middle of the American Revolution on a hot summer Saturday, the 15th of August 1778 in the State of Connecticut. Nothing is known of his life as a young man other than he claimed that he enlisted in the War of 1812 and fought pirates off the Barbary Coast of Africa. Then around 1818, when he was forty years old, he married twenty-year old Sarah Childs. Michigan Farm In 1836, the Gould family moved to the Territory of Michigan, the home of Indians and still at that time comparatively unknown to white settlers. They settled fifteen miles south of Ann Arbor in Milan, Monroe County where three years later, on October 29, 1839, their youngest child, Jane Elizabeth (called Jennie), was born. Conversion to Mormonism In August 1842, Samuel was one of the four hundred and five people who converted that year to Mormonism. Election Mission 1844 On Thursday, the 9th of May 1844, Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898) and George A. Smith (a cousin of Joseph Smith, Jr.) were among the elders who left Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois for a nine-week mission that included Michigan. Samuel was one of eighty-nine individuals who, on Saturday, the 8th of June, joined Elders Woodruff , Smith and Zebedee Coltrin (1804-1887) at the Pleasant Valley conference held at Breed B. Searles' home in Brighton Township, Livingston County. On that Saturday, Samuel was ordained an elder along with Charles Alphonzo Terry and his brother Lysander Terry, Isaac Williamson, and Samuel Harrington. This group was beginning a mission to campaign for the Presidential Election of Joseph Smith that year, as the Mormons were frustrated with ongoing religious persecution and their plight being ignored by all of the major candidates. Mormon Battalion March 1846-47 Sometime before 1846, Samuel left his wife and family in Michigan, and taking his oldest son with him, joined the nearly 15,000 Mormons living in Nauvoo, Illinois. They were among the Mormons who began the westward exodus on Wednesday, the 4th of February. A temporary camp, known as Winter Quarters, was located on the western banks of the Missouri River in the unorganized territory of the United States across from Kanesville (called Council Bluffs after 1852) in the Iowa Territory. Over 500 men, along with fifteen to sixteen families and forty-five to fifty children volunteered. On Thursday, the 16th of July, five companies of men were mustered into service at Kanesville. Samuel, almost sixty-eight years old and the oldest member of the Mormon Battalion, and his son, John, now twenty-six years old, were assigned to Company C under Captain James Brown. The following Monday, the Mormon Battalion left on a 200-mile, ten-day march for Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) where the new recruits were equipped with one blanket, a knapsack, a canteen that held three pints of water, smoothbore flint-lock muskets, a few cap-lock rifles for sharpshooting and hunting purposes and thirty six rounds of ammunition in a cartridge box for each soldier, one hundred tents, and all the necessary equipment for a long journey. Samuel and his son John were both part of the second detachment of sick soldiers that traveled with 84 others from Santa Fe to Pueblo, Colorado. 1847 Salt Lake Valley The following spring, on Thursday, the 3rd of June, 1847, Brigham Young dispatched Amasa Lyman and a small party from Winter Quarters to intercept the soldiers at Fort Pueblo. The soldiers were directed to join Brigham Young and the first Pioneer Company that had already left Winter Quarters for the move west. Amasa Lyman found Samuel with a small group pursuing trader Tim Goodale and few other traders who had stolen horses from the Mormons. The Battalion Advance Party caught up with Brigham Young and the Pioneer Company of 142 men, three women and two children at the Green River (Wyoming) on Saturday, the Fourth of July. In Salt Lake, Samuel Gould and James Dunn were appointed "lime burners." Their job was to crush and burn the lime in a kiln to make plaster that would cover the adobe brick walls. A ten-acre lot was laid out for a fort where about 160 families would spend the winter. 1847 Trip to Winter Quarters Two weeks later, on Thursday, 26th of August, after just one month in the Salt Lake Valley, 107 men including Samuel and John, were sent back to Winter Quarters with the "horse and mule train." After two long and difficult months of travel and with winter already setting in, the "Returning Pioneers" marched into Winter Quarters on Tuesday, the 31st of October. The streets of town were lined with people welcoming them When the winter was finally over and frost off the ground, Samuel and John accompanied the three companies of Mormons that left Winter Quarters for Salt Lake beginning on Monday, the 5th of June 1848. 1848 Return to Michigan In late 1848, after a nearly five year absense, Samuel and John returned to the family home and Michigan with their Mormon Battalion back-pay (probably Sapnish doubloons) to convince them to join the Mormons in Utah. 1849 California Gold Rush Samuel placed an advertisement in the Wednesday, January 24, 1849 edition of the Ann Arbor Whig. "HO FOR CALIFORNIA!" the headline read. All who were interested in knowing how to get to California from someone who knew from actual observations of the country were invited to meet Samuel three days hence at Hawkin's Tavern in Ypsilanti. While many neighbors were quite anxious to make the trip to California, they were quite suspicious that Samuel was really trying to convert them to Mormonism. Noone joined his wagon team. Instead in 1849 he and John went to Kanesville and joined two companies of immigrants headed to Utah. Many of his own family staying behind. * On the Parley P Pratt exploration through Utah. In book called Over the Rim. * Listed in LDS Pioneer Overland Travel records: Samuel Gould * Also one of the first missionaries to Australia. Marriage and Family References * Samuel Gould 1778 Immigrant Ancestors - Famous Ancestors, Cousins, Descendants * #11561959 * Mormon Pioneers - Category:American military personnel of the Mexican–American War